constitutional rights

constitutional rights

n. rights given or reserved to the people by the U. S. Constitution, and in particular, the Bill of Rights (first ten amendments). These rights include: writ of habeas corpus, no bill of attainder, no duties or taxes on transporting goods from one state to another, (Article 1, Section 9), jury trials (Article III, Section 1), freedom of religion, speech, press (which includes all media), assembly and petition (First Amendment), state militia to bear arms (Second Amendment), no quartering of troops in homes (Third Amendment), no unreasonable search and seizure (Fourth Amendment), major ("capital and infamous") crimes require indictment, no double jeopardy (more than one prosecution) for the same crime, no self-incrimination, right to due process, right to just compensation for property taken by eminent domain (Fifth Amendment); in criminal law, right to a speedy trial, to confront witnesses against one, and to counsel (Sixth Amendment), trial by jury (Seventh amendment), right to bail, no excessive fines, and no cruel and unusual punishments (Eighth amendment), unenumerated rights are reserved to the people (Ninth amendment), equal protection of the laws (14th amendment), no racial bars to voting (15th amendment), no sex bar to voting (19th amendment), and no poll tax (24th amendment). Constitutional interpretation has expanded and added nuances to these rights. (See: constitution, Bill of Rights)

If by the mere force of numbers a majority should deprive a minority of any clearly written Constitutional right, it might, in a moral point of view, justify revolution--certainly would if such a right were a vital one.

Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing government, they can exercise their CONSTITUTIONAL right of amending it, or their REVOLUTIONARY right to dismember or overthrow it.

Burke's plea was that although England had a theoretical constitutional right to tax the colonies it was impracticable to do so against their will, that the attempt was therefore useless and must lead to disaster, that measures of conciliation instead of force should be employed, and that the attempt to override the liberties of Englishmen in America, those liberties on which the greatness of England was founded, would establish a dangerous precedent for a similar course of action in the mother country itself.

Nor is there any excuse for this in the theory that, when an association devotes itself to a specialized sphere of life protected by one constitutional right, it no longer is a full person with the full range of constitutional rights beyond its specialized slice of life.

For "[t]he legislature is free to change, even radically, the legislative limitation of a constitutional right over time, from one generation to the next, from one election to the next, even from one sitting of the legislature to the next" (p.

Magistro and school board members were dismayed this summer when a federal judge sided with Borden's audacious argument that he had a constitutional right to participate in religious activities with his players.

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